Live on Sky News Australia.
This is Denika to Georgio.
Hello Andrew, Welcome to the program coming up tonight, Vale of Secrecy Labor reportedly involved in meetings dating back months to repatriate the ISIS brides. Wait until you hear Tony Burke's latest spin. I'll unpack this and the PM's denials that mass immigration is an issue with liberal Tony Pasen.
The King further embroiled in the Andrew saga as calls grow for Australia to become a republic in the wake of the former Prince's arrest and Donald Trump slaps a fifteen percent tariff on the world.
What does this mean for US?
Economist Leith van Onslin will explain, but first tonight, A lot has been said this week about Pauline Hanson, the.
Left having a field day, calling her racist and so on.
Now, whatever you think about the comments she made on this channel last week, one thing about the One Nation leader is her consistency on issues like mass migration and migrants respecting our values. Yet the left want to cancel her case in point Senator Fatima Payment now have a listen to her comments about Pauline Hanson last night.
Our Pauline Hanson that if she doesn't like Hawthens are here in Australia, then she can really pack her bags and go to the US and continue being best buds with Trump.
Now, this is where Fatima and the left in general have got it all wrong. Right now, in my view, multiculturalism has failed in this country. It wasn't always this way, and I'm pro migration. I'm the granddaughter of migrants, but in my view it has to be tightly controlled with strict checks and balances and restrictions from terrorist hotspots. But the problem right now is when the door is left open to people whose values are incompatible with ours, the
multiculturalism experiment fails. A harmonious society of cultures is a myth, and I'm not talking about all cultures. I'm talking about those who do not fit in with a Western democracy.
Not all cultures are.
Created equal, and I could list countless examples of where multiculturalism has failed. Hate preachers, weekly anti Israel protests, rye anti Semitism, chance of globalized the Intofada, flags of terror groups being waived, Jewish flags set a light, our national monuments hijacked, and of course acts of terror. So what on earth is fatima payment a migrant to this country lecturing on this is how we do it in Australia. Well, how we do it in Australia is we respect our values.
Immigrants come into this country to do it how we do it, not the other way around. But unfortunately there are some who have come here not to be Australian. Yet fatima payment from Afghanistan, our country where women are treated like dirt, is telling an Australian born woman to leave the country.
Seriously.
I mean this is the same fadom of Payment who claimed Iran was an incredible place for women. And the thing is the left's narrative on migration right now is in disarray. They're so desperate they actually want to lock up Pauline Hanson again. The AFP has reportedly received reports of crime over her comments about Muslims. Now, are we about to witness the first test of Labour's hate speech laws?
What is a threshold? We don't know.
What does it mean for free speech? We don't know Pauline Hanson's comments about Muslims. In my view, we're wrong. The majority of Muslims live peacefully in this country and it does take the focus off radical Islam, which is at.
The heart of the problem. But if Pauline Hanson.
Is about to be investigated, then we have blasphemy laws on our hands and I'm concerned that we are going the way of the UK, where people are being arrested for saying things that the government does not like. The PM was duck and weaving today on this on Sky News.
There's a separation here. Politicians were responsible for putting laws in place. It's important that the authorities, who I have confidence in be allowed to do their job. I'm not a lawyer, nor am I in charge of fulfilling those laws. I'll allow the appropriate authorities to engage.
Well, it was always going to be the problem.
There's no threshold, and in a time when Australia has changed, particularly after October seven and even more since Bondai, the two big parties have not caught up, and the common denominator is mass migration. The Prime Minister was in full gas light mode today claiming that there's no problem with immigration from Islamic countries.
The Australian covenant is that if people have any prejudice or hatred, it's left at the customs Hall when they arrive in Australia, and overwhelmingly Astralians show respect to each other. Overwhelmingly Australians, regardless of which, what their faith is, who they are, what their background is, we overwhelmingly live in harmony in this country.
The problem is people who do not leave their hate at the customs hall. Now, labour's led in more than three thousand gardens with little to.
No security checks.
The majority of Gazans supported the October seven massacre it's led in isis Brides. And that's not including this latest cohort that could be headed our way.
And now the daughter of a sanctioned Iranian.
Military leader who acted as an advisor to the Ayatola and has been accused of involvement in Tehran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs was granted permanent residency. And that's despite consistent warnings to the Albanese government. Yet the PM is claiming that all is above board.
Do you think there are some countries where we could take less people or consider checks as it appears the oppositions consider type checks.
Andrew, this is something that politicians shouldn't be allowed to say things that they know isn't true.
They know I agree with you on that that we have.
Well you need to hold them to account, Andrew, because they know full well that we have checks on migration in this country.
Well, clearly that's not the case. I mean I just mentioned the Gazans and the PMS treating us like fools so he can yet again pander to the Muslim vote.
So it's little wonder One.
Nation is now leading in the polls outpolling Labor and the Liberal Party in Victoria. Have a look at this. This is voting intentions. This is the first time it's topped a poll across the country and in Victoria, of all states, a Labor held Union stronghold, and it means if an election were to be held today, it would be a hung parliament there. And have a look at
this poll in today's Dally Telegraph. In terms of a three party preferred measure which tracks can heeatitiveness between the Coalition and One Nation, the opposition leader Angus Taylor has a mountain to climb to claw back support to One Nation. Labors well ahead on forty four percent One Nation on twenty nine. That's two points ahead of the Coalition on twenty seven. Senator Hanson is viewed more positively than both
Angus Taylor and Anthony Albanesi. And the One Nation's leader net approval rating is at plus nine, so that's ahead of the opposition leader on plus three and if you look at the Prime Minister, he's down fifteen on his net approval. So there's certainly a lot of work to do to claw back those two million votes from One Nation And I really do think the Coalition has a real chance to get it right when it comes to immigration policy, and under a conservative leader in Angus Taylor,
they may just get there. But as I said, Australia has changed the mass migration myth.
It doesn't bode well anymore.
It's time to face up to the facts.
Now I mentioned there the Isis brides.
Much longer can Labour keep up the denials and the facade that it has nothing to do with the repatriation of these women. The Daily Telegraph has revealed that high level briefings between the Federal government and New South Wales agencies to repatriate the Isis brides have been going on
for months keyword there months. So the plans for the cohort's return were far more advanced than what the Prime Minister and Labor has been telling you this week they are not receiving assistants to return to Australia and the Australian Government will not assist them.
They made a choice to go to Syria. We won't be repatriating them from Syria.
The government is providing no support for the repatriation of these people.
Labour's known from the very beginning. A senior federal government source told The Telegraph. I became aware of the meetings in September and they have been primarily focused on reintegration support and services such as specialist health and trauma care for women and children.
There were also briefings.
On the management of ongoing risk assessments and monitoring for these people in the community. This is why the government's lack of transparency on this issue in the past week has been completely unethical. They did know the group were returning imminently. Look this absolutely squanders the suggestions by the Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke that Labor had no involvement. And don't forget the revelations that two
women inside the ouroach camp. This is where the group is staying in Syria, said via an encrypted messaging app that eleven Australian women and twenty three children were told in late January that they were quote likely to be returning home. Both sources in the camp also confirmed the women were being assisted by an Australian government delegate. So where is the transparency from the minister?
Are you actively trying to stop them coming back?
Then?
Oh, we don't want them to come.
Back, but are you actively trying to stop them?
We're actively making sure we do nothing to help them, nothing to help them at all.
Look, this is a disgrace, this is a scandal. Okay, these are not all innocent women. Most left this great country to join the death cult willingly, and now that the jihadi romance hasn't quite gone to plan, they want to come back here and live a peaceful life. And Labour's first instinct is to help them out. Now what does that tell you about how once again Muslim votes are being put before safety and values. And only one of this cohort has been given an exclusion order so far,
why not the rest of them? Well, if you ask the Home Affairs Minister.
We know the different individuals, We.
Know them well, g to, I know a lot of people too, but none of whom have gone overseas to join a terror group, and none of them have even had formal interviews from security authorities.
Why can't they go and interview them? I mean, from what you're saying, it sounds like they're monitoring their communications and collecting what information they can. Wouldn't it be better to sit down with each of them before giving them a passport to come home?
Or at the moment we're not sending officials in there?
Why not? Because if there's a risk of them coming back, and they do pose any sort of risk, wouldn't it be better to send.
A I think I've just gone through the extent to which we have knowledge of these individuals, knowledge.
But interviewing them, Like, why not interview them?
Well, we had people there on the ground earlier, we have continued to track these individuals the whole way through.
It doesn't fill you with a lot of hope when they haven't even been interviewed. My colleague Sharry marks And reported last week that the last time interviews were conducted with the ISIS cohort of thirty four individuals was back in twenty twenty two, and that was confirmed by Burke this morning when asked why he's so confident that they don't pose a threat.
They are not a coherent cohort. The cohort is not consistent. There are very different people within that cohort, with different histories and different states of mind. If I put it in those terms, they are quite different.
I could not give a toss about the women's history, nor could I care about their state of mind. That is not the threshold for minimum level security in this country.
Are we seriously.
Basing it off the level of coherency of a person? And the Opposition has again raised concerns.
These are people who left our country, a prosperous, peaceful, liberal democracy to go and join.
Isis that every one of.
Them should face charges if they ever find their way back home, But frankly, the priority should be keeping them.
Offshore where they can do no harm to.
Australia and labours handed them passports.
Sure might be citizens, but the Passport Act is very clear. It says a passport can be denied if someone might prejudice the security of Australia. Now, surely these women meet that threshold of the eleven Nazarene's Zaha brother claims that she unknowingly went to Syria, but still married an ISIS fighter who was later sentenced to death. Samaya Zahab, whose brother joined ISIS and was killed in an airstrike, He was believed to have encouraged several relatives to follow him
to Syria. Then there's Kirsty ross Emily, whose Moroccan born husband was stripped of his Australian citizenship. And Zara Ahmad, who told the ABC that once male relatives align themselves with Islamic state, the women felt compelled to follow. She married a terror recruiter as well. Now it's not about their circumstances, it's about who we are bringing in. Tony Burke has denied the Daily Telegraphs report that Labor has been involved in conduct repatriation efforts.
Well, if that's the case.
Labor has to come clean about what it knew, when it knew, and what it has been up to behind the scenes to help out and key why, I mean, after everything that's happened in this country, after the largest terror attack on home soil, a little girl among those.
Murdered, Labor just doesn't get it.
So good luck trying to convince me that bringing ISIS brides back home is a great idea. Let's bring in liberal MP now Tony Passon, Tony good to catch up. As always, thanks for joining me. Firstly, I just want to get your reaction to these revelations that Labor briefed state agencies on the return of Isis brides and how contradictory is it to what we've been hearing from Labor all week.
Well, the Naker, like you, I think it's scandalous and I think this story has a lot further to run. What we're now seeing is Labour trying to talk out of both sides. It's for its mouth on this issue. At the as kind as I can be, we've got a government that's currently indifferent about the return of these Arsist brides. I don't want a government that's indifferent about their return. I want a government using every single power at its disposal to ensure these women who left this
country to join jihad don't come back. They can use the Passports Act, but quite frankly, every single arm of government should be focused on ensuring Australians are kept safe, and part of that is for these individuals never to return home or thirty four of them.
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more.
And the other thing is Tony Burke admitted today that they have not been interviewed since twenty twenty two and that security officials won't be going back there to interview them.
I mean, it doesn't really fill you with any hope, does it.
Well, that's my point. If you were genuine in your desire to ensure these viduals don't return, you would send officials to go and interview these women and get as much detail and information as we can to ensure that were they to return. Noting that we are doing I would hope we're doing this to ensure they can't. But were they to return, that they face the full force of the law. I mean that's a classic example of
this indifference. It's like all k and no responsibility. Oh well, if they come home, that's fine, we'll deal with them then. I mean that is the reason why more and more Australians have a losing faith in this government and its decision making. Yeah.
Look absolutely, and in the end, they left here willingly. They knew what they were doing when they left this great country to go and join that death cult. So you can't convince me that this is a wonderful idea to bring.
These women back.
I've got no sympathy for any of them I mentioned just before as well. The Prime Minister has also downplayed immigration concerns, especially from Islamic country. Now, I personally think Tony that immigration is an acute voat driving issue. I mean, Labour's letting more than one point one million migrants into the country. It's not also about how many, it's about where they're from. We've seen three thousand gardens come here
with little to security checks. But why do you think that the Prime Minister is so desperate to play down the immigration concerns.
Well because of his track record. I mean the reality is on his watch we've seen record levels of migration and I've got to say if he's downplaying the sentiment that he's out there in community, more for him. Janiki, your grandparents, by parents came to this country. They came to make a contribution. They came to join Team Australia, not checking the Hotel Australia. They share our values and
wanted to be part of this great country. And the reality is there is a whole cohort of people who are coming to this country who now don't share those values and we need to ensure we have appropriate mechanisms in place that such that people that do come to this country understand that it is a great privilege. I mean, Australian citizenship in my view, is the golden ticket and
we shouldn't just be giving it out. Willy Nearly Having said that, Prime Minister needs to understand that the best I think retail politician in the country right now, Peter Malenawskis, understands the concern people have around this issue and he's making it very clear that he's speaking directly to One Nation voters because he's worried about the rise in sentiment and support for that political party.
Well, I do actually want to ask you a question on one Nation, but just back to migration, and you do have a point on that. Earlier in the week we saw a Susan Lee drafted up policy that she was apparently got a release but never did, and had restrictions on a certain amount of countries or people coming from parts of countries, particularly terrorism hotspots.
Would you support.
A proposal like that, so a ban on certain regions.
Janeka, I don't think this should be based on geography. I think this should be based on values. Now, of course, I think when individuals are coming from particular hotspots, I think you nearly really need to ramp up the checking to ensure that people who are coming to this country share our values. They for example, respect the rule of law and are prepared to buy into Western civilization if you like. But geography I don't think should be the test.
I think it should be values. People coming with the right attitude, the right aptitude. I'm open to the idea that we might have waiting periods that give us the opportunity to make those assessments. And of course anyone who doesn't meet the requisite standard they can check out of Hotel Australia as soon as we can make that happen.
But how do you test for that? How can you really judge a person's values?
Well, this is something that we'll need to work through the detail of Jamaka, because this is an important element of where as I understand it, Angus Taylor wants to take us. But like I said, I'm not suggesting that geography is irrelevant. Obviously, where there are these hotspots, there will need to be a greater degree of scrutiny. But I really do think you can't simply tar one geographical
area completely with the one brush. I mean, that's not a values based system, and we need to ensure that we're operating a values based system because I think the mistake that's been made in the past is we've allowed people come to this country who don't share our values, who don't want to buy in, who don't understand that the quid pro quo here is you come to make a contribution as opposed to come and receive. So I
think we'll need to work through the criteria. It's difficult, it's devilishly difficult, but we will need to get those settings right because it's only by doing that that we can ensure we can create that cultural cohesion that we long for and that perhaps we had in the eighties and nineties.
Yeah, yeah, and yeah post World War Two, I would say dating back that far as well, just very quickly on One Nation there was that Poland in the Daily Telegraph today. So in terms of a three party preferred measure, this tracks competitiveness between the Coalition and One Nation. It suggests that the Opposition leader Angus Taylor has a mountain to climb to claw back support from One Nation. Labors well ahead there one nation twenty nine percent. The Coalition
they're on twenty seven percent. You've got a lot of work to do, Tony between now and the next election.
How do you do that? Well, you're right.
The election of the new leader has brought us to the bottom of the mountain and we need to climb it. The way we do it is we earned a Liberal Party back into a policy will create a set of policies that meet the needs of the Australian people, but more importantly reflect traditional conservative liberal values. I mean, I think one of the reasons why people are moving into the one nation column is they're confused about what the
Liberal Party stands for. That's not an Australia or a Liberal Party that we saw under John Howard or Tony Abbott. People knew instinctively what the Liberal Party stood for, and it stood for policies that met the standard of traditional liberal conservative values. And we need to do that and make it very clear. But Janika, I'm saying to my colleagues,
talks cheap. The reality is we need to act like a center right political party or we need those policies to be set out clearly and communicated to the Australian people. And then we need to do We need to act every day in accordance with the values and the standards we set for ourselves. It's only on that basis that we can start walking up the track, climb this mountain. Any deviation off that track, it's a very narrow path.
Any disunity, any attempt to talk about ourselves, will throw us off that course and we will never climb this mountain. And we'll just see one nation vote climb. Pardon the pun, up and up and up.
Yeah, look, you're not wrong, You're absolutely not wrong. A long road ahead, but you know, I hope for the best for the party, that's for sure. Tony Passon and I to see you as always, Thanks very much for joining me. Well let's get into it now with my panel, former New South Wales Police Minister David Elliott and New South Wales Independent MP Tanya Mahala.
Kind of both of you as always, thank you for joining me. We're going to start with these iis brides. David, you're a former counter terrorism minister.
Do you buy this argument from labor that or they haven't been at all involved? I mean, you know what goes on behind the scenes. What can you tell us.
They're playing us for fools. They are playing us for fools.
I've sat.
I was made the to counter terrorism. It is nine years ago and one of the first briefings I had was how the state governments, the service providers were going to manage the returned Isis brides and their children. We
knew exactly what was going to happen. They were going to come back, they radicalized, they were hateful, though eventuful, and the state governments had to be prepared on the back of the briefings from the Commonwealth about where they're going to go to school, what counseling are they going to need, what sign of medical assistance they're going to
be they're going to require. So for the Commonwealth government to stand up and say we've got nothing to do with this is so frustrating because it is a lie, and I think they dug themselves into this lie, and they're now trying to they're trying to get themselves out of it. And as we all know in politics, sometimes it's not the act, it's the cover up exactly.
And it's getting worse and worse because their lies are being exposed on the daily now and what about this argument from Tony Burke Tanya when she said, oh, he said, well some of the group are not coherent.
Is that the threshold? Is it now? For enough? Had?
I thought he hadn't met them or interviewed them. And how it can come up with that exactly?
How can you make that assessment?
I have to say, And look, I agree completely with David and yourself on this, and I do think there's such a horrific cover up here that it's worth actually the Coalition or anyone calling for a Royal Commission or a Special Commissioner of Inquiry so that we can actually demand that public servants be brought forward and question these public servants so they can actually provide the details. Is
how much the government's actually involved. The idea that there's nothing to see, they haven't been partaking in any kind of discussions about how to get these women back is a complete and utter lie, not just a cover up. It's a lie that needs to be exposed. I have to say this. It does make my blood boil to think that these women voluntarily signed up knowing that they were going to go to a country, participate and join
a terrorrist organization. Marry some isis fighter and then once they're discarded, the husbands are either dead or in jails exactlyefully they've been discarded, they want to come back to Australia with their offspring and they expect the Australian taxpayer to foot the bill.
It makes me.
So angry to think about how many older Australians who are on pensions on the waiting list for house Look, that's a good point, waiting for elective surgery.
Won't even have enough houses in this country.
Correct, These people were clearly Burke and his and his friends were clearly going to far straight.
They're pandering. These absolutely'ir pandering.
And yeah again it's us Australians who what we just see idly buy while you know a possible threat comes into this country.
Let's move on. I want to talk about Labour's disastrous pursuit of net zero.
It's been labeled as an industrial suicide. Energy experts have told Sky News that the consequences of soaring system costs, project overruns and tightening emissions policy will deliver the death knell for the heavy industry. So this is our minium smelters Alumina refinery still works. Fertilizer plants, and the list
goes on. I mean, David, unsurprising because these plants that are consuming so much energy in the first place, there bills a skyrocketing and we're going to go to what twenty fifty with this disaster.
Yeah, this should scare the bajass out of every Australia, not just the people that are involved in mass production, because because construction costs in Australia at the moment, with a massive backlog we have for infrastructure, the construction costs in Australia at the moment are getting out of hands. So this will supercharge those costs. This will put a
loading on the cost of construction in this country. And the engineers across the country will tell you that they cannot fathom the blowout in infrastructure costs in this country. And you know, it's literally getting to a point where tenders have been closed and then tenders are asking if they can have a revised tendering process, because by the time the job's been approved, those costs are completely irrelevant,
those costs are out of have been blown out. So and of course it's it's very much a case of the marketing of zero. It should never have been called zero. Nobody believed it was going.
To be the con job.
It should have just been we want to be good custodians of the earth, and everybody would have gone on the journey.
Yeah, everybody.
Yes, there is a case where renewable energies in my in my house, for example, have been cost effective. But please don't make the cost of building my home triple because you guys can't. You guys can't come up with some consistent and.
Believable pobles totally.
And the problem is as well manufacturing. The sector is already down in this country right now. One driven labor has driven it to the ground. But you add energy cross on to that, it is a significant warning to say it's the death of the industry.
Yeah.
In Australia, Injury Regulator has just approved another six hundred million to subsidize renewable for the next financial year, on top of four hundred ninety three million last year and three hundred and forty one.
Million the year before.
So it tells you that renewables are just forever going to be a huge cost and burden for Australians. But look, our industries are already suffering we're already there's so much that Australia doesn't produce. As it is in Australia, we've got to hold on to whatever we can, to the refineries, to hold onto what machinery that we do continue to still to build in Australia, and of course energy costs are a huge factor. I've got to say something about
net zero Commission. I remind David, and I know David wasn't in Parliament, but the Coalition New South Wales supported the net zero targets in New South Wales. They're crazy twenty thirty five targets, let alone the twenty fifty and the net Zero Commission that they've set up in New South Wales, which has been plowed with millions of dollars lots of stuff, is now demanding that every agency in New South Wales respond regarding those emission targets. They're putting
pressure on every single agency. So it's going to get worse and worse. So you can only imagine the level of costs.
It is out of control, and it is already out of control. That's the problem of going broken backwards in this country. Now we've got to talk about the former Prince Andrew. Obviously, his arrest over the weekend has now reignited calls for Australia to become a republic. It gets worse than work. This is a disaster now for the royal family. David, correct me if I'm wrong. You were part of a republican movement.
Around the no case, got it wrong so.
Well.
Listen, the Republicans have been trying to push their calls since Henry the knocked off Aenderlin.
This is true, This is true.
There's nothing new. They lost badly in ninety nine and they threw everything at us. They said, you know, they threw you know, the stories about the late Princess Diana. They tried to call Prince Philip everything under the sun. They lost badly. Then they said, don't worry everybody. When the queen dies, that will be our moment to strike. Guess what happened with her disaster?
Yeah, exactly.
It went to Pastry. Because they didn't count on the fact that Charles would. He's so well received around the Commonwealth. So knocking over the monarchy because of Prince Andrew would be like knocking over the papacy because of the Borges. It just doesn't make any sense.
No.
I agree, and I think the King has handed this with dignity under the circumstances, and they've done the right thing by stripping him of all of his titles. But the monarchy's been around for a thousand years and have seen a lot worse than this.
Well, I mean, he's going to get heckled now everywhere. And this is the problem now the king is he's out and about doing his royal duties and he's getting heckled. I mean, is it really time to reignite the Republican movement debate?
Do you think there's.
Nobody left in Australia that's that's work on that campaign?
I think?
Is it matthis away for the laborer they abolished it, give it up the Labor Party, you've given up on the Australia public.
Yeah, everyone has no one maybe the Green the Greens maybe well the Greens please until they get their knighthoods, well, well accept those. But look, it is a disaster for the royal family when you think, and this investigation's only just begun, let's let's see what happens, and it's getting worse for people around the world as well.
I will say that Tanya David.
Great to see you as a Thanks very much for joining me on the show.
So with us coming up after the break, Donald Trump's.
New ultimatum for Iran war is on the horizon. We'll speak to an expert about the President's latest red line.
That's next. Welcome back.
Let's get the latest on the volatile situation in Iran.
Now.
Donald Trump's given a ran a deadline of ten days to reach a deal on nuclear negotiations as the US military built up in the Middle East intensifies. Joining me now is former Defense Deputy Secretary for Strategy Peter Jennings. Peter, good to see you again. Thank you very much for joining me. You and I spoke about this a couple of days ago. It was volatile then, but where are we at now?
So I thought, Tanika, that there was every possible ability we would be at this moment talking about an American strike unfolding across Iran. That obviously hasn't happened, but I think we're probably within a day or two of it actually taking place. The second US aircraft carrier, the gerald Ford, came into the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar about thirty six hours ago, so it's maybe a day away from its ideal location from the point of view of
conducting air operations. I noticed there's also a British Royal Royal Air Force fighter group has moved into the Middle Eastern theater as well. So what's happening has been a continued buildup of military force into the region. Some have said a build up as great as we saw before
the two thousand and three Iraq war. I would suspect in terms of firepower even greater actually, And to me that suggests that we're likely to see unless there is a completely unexpected breakthrough agreement, which I think is frankly impossible in US run negotiations. I think the possibility of a military strike in the next few days is highly likely.
So okay, so if there is indeed a military strike, then in the next few days, I guess what happens there. I mean, if we've got ships already going in, it really does feel like something's about to bubble over. Are we actually just talking about all out war? What's the threshold?
Well, that's not what Trump has done in the past. I mean, he does tend to be someone who goes in in very targeted, limited ways and He's spoken in the last twenty four hours or so about limited strikes, But you've got to contrast that against the reality that there's a lot of force in the region, more than is needed to just go and do a few more
strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. So I'm sticking to the view that I think we're going to see a broader strike which is going to target, for example, Iran's ability to lay minds in the straits of wo Moves. They're going to go after the Uranian Navy, They're going to go after command and control facilities of the Uranian Revolutionary Guards, and possibly or so against those internal forces, police and security which are being so internally repressive of the Iranian population.
Right now, I think this is potentially going to be the biggest military operation that we'll have seen under either the first or second Trump presidency, And in fact, I would be rather surprised now if it turns out to be twenty four hours worth of missile strikes and then that's the carriers are packing up and going home. That doesn't seem to me to be consistent with what's happening on the ground.
And you mentioned it.
If there is even any possibility of a deal. So Donald Trump's laid down the line that Iran has ten days. But the problem is, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, how confident can we actually be that even if a deal was signed, even if Iran did come to the table, would they even honor it?
Highly unlikely. I mean, that would be completely against everything we've seen from the behavior of this regime really since nineteen seventy nine. And I'm not reading or seeing anywhere people saying that a breakthrough is likely. And I think the American view is correctly that Iran is trying to string this out. The other point I'd say, Danika on the ten days that Trump has talked about, is that he's never very precise in terms of his time frames.
He often says about a fortnight, and things happen much sooner than that. So I think we've got to be open to the reality that what Trump is doing has been a little opaque about when those forces are ready to go. Let me tell you they're ready to go. They could operate right now if they wanted to. And then the issue that Trump has is not so much when to start, but how long can he keep them there?
At that level of readiness, you can only keep them in the block for so long, and so I think this is why the timeframe is closing and we're likely to see an operation sooner rather than later.
Well, all eyes will definitely be on Trump and Iran right now. It's going to be interesting to see how the week pans out. Peter Jennings, good to catch up with you again. Thanks very much for your time this evening. We'll still to come. Donald Trump slaps of fifteen percent tariff.
On the world.
What does it mean for US? Economist Leath Van Onsolin will explain. Plus i'vo live to London as the King is embroiled in the Andrew Saga. GB News host Emily Carver is next for the latest.
Welcome back.
Well, Donald Trump has announced a blanket fifteen percent.
Tariff rate on the whole world.
Joining me now is Macro Business chief economist Leath Van Nosolin. Leith, thanks for your time. So we already got slapped with a ten percent baseline tariff.
So what does this new hike mean for US?
Yeah, so economically, look, the increased tariff's there unfortunate and especially for the companies impacted, they're not going to have a massive impact on the economy, not really even a material impact on the economy, because Australia only exports, well, last year only exported fifty five billion dollars worth of goods and services to the USA, So an extra five percent tariffs is not going to move the dial from
a macro economic perspective. But I think the bigger takeaway here, Daniker, is that Australia should be pretty wary of the Trump administration when it talks about trade because despite the fact we had a pre existing free trade agreement with the USA in place for twenty years which was heavily skewed in the US's favor, and we import twice as many goods and services from the US as we import, will still being smashed for this fifteen percent tariffs. So it's very unfortunate.
Yeah, it's almost like Donald Trump woke up this morning and decided, surprise, we're going to make her grand announcement of tariffs. You never know what could happen day by day there. But yeah, interesting to say that he won't have that big of an impact on us.
Let's talk about capital gains.
Anthony Arbernezi has refused to say whether his government is considering changes to capital gains tax here he was this morning.
Are you considering altering the capital gains tax discount in this country?
What we're considering doing is handing down to Budget Andrew on the second Tuesday in May.
So no CGT change.
Our focus, as I've said, is tax cuts this July.
I just wonder leth what this means.
I mean, if you've got an investment property, you know, we don't have enough houses as it is, Which should we be concerned about any of these changes or not?
Yeah, So look, I personally believe that capital gains tax discount is too generous and it does encourage property investment by too much property investment into established homes, and that does crowd out first home buyers. So if you reduce the capital gains text discount, it we'll put some tiny downward pressure on house prices, not a lot, but it should lift the home ownership rates slightly because you can
have a fewer investors competing against first home buyers. And it's also going to provide the government with a bit of extra tax revenew But what I'd like to say, and I actually agreet the business counts on this to see the capital gains text discount reduced in conjunction with a broader tax reform program that basically spreads the burden of taxation away from workers, because at the moment, worker is an incredibly heavily text, and we don't tax a
whole bunch of other things that we should. So I'd rather see it done, you know, with respect to a broader tax reform package. And I also think that that existing investors should be grandfather as well, because they obviously undertook the investments with a certain set of rules, and to be unfairter then change the rules after they've undertaken their investments.
Yeah, look, it'll be interesting to see how this one plays out.
Now.
I want to talk trade is because a new report has found that there simply aren't enough trades people to meet Labour's target of building one point two million homes over five years. It's currently tracking twenty seven percent below its target. You know, labor has not achieved not one of its housing goals. And as you and I have spoken about this in the past, lethe yet. You know, we've got the migration map well and truly open. Where on earth are we going to put all these people?
It comes to the bill, the actual trades, how short could we be?
Yeah, so cording to build skills Australia where one hundred and seventeen thousand trades short to meet the government's housing targets. Now again we're running way behind that, but that is just to increase the housing supply, so it doesn't factor in all the additional infrastructure you need for a growing population, you know, all the extra energy infrastructure we need, or
the Brisbane Olympics, that sort of thing. But the reality here is that Australia's housing infrastructure shortage is kind of worsen so long as the government keeps importing more people than we can build for. And the optimal solution therefore is to run a smaller and more targeted immigration program. So it needs to be smaller so we don't so
demand doesn't run ahead of supply. We also need a better targeted immigration system that targets areas of genuine scored a shortage like tradees, instead of importing more uber drivers, which we don't need. It's otherwise I don't if we don't run a small immigration program that's better targeted. These shortages of housing infrastructural as other things are just going to continue forever.
Yeah, we just seemed to be going backwards at the same time.
We're almost out of time, but very quickly.
Real wages they're also going backwards for the first time since September between twenty three.
What does this mean moving forward?
Yeah, Look, unfortunately the Zerve Bank of Australia's latest statement of Monetary policy for US for US at real wages and not going to recover over the Ford estimate. So by by I think it's the end of twenty twenty eight, they're still going to be tracking at late twenty eleven levels. Now, this all gets down to productivity. If we don't if Australia don't lift this productivity growth, we're not going to have real wage growth and we're not going to have
per capita GDP growth. It's as simple as that. That should be the government's focus.
Yeah, Jim Chalmers doesn't seem too worried at the moment. That's half of the problem. Leith van Oncel nice to see was always thanks very much for your time this evening. Well, the Andrew Mount Batton winsor saga is a disaster for the Royal family and it gets even worse for the King and mid revelations. King Charles was warned as long as twenty nineteen that the royal family's name was being abused by Andrew mount Batten Windsor's business associations. Joining us
now from London is gb News host Emily Carver. Emily, thanks for your time.
Well here we go again. What more can you tell us about this?
Well? Absolutely, the papers are absolutely full of new revelations about Prince Andrew, what and when the Royal family knew. The attention is, as you say, back on the King himself. This is a revelation in the Daily Mail this morning that an email from twenty nineteen suggested that the King was warned then by a whistleblower about the actions of his brother. Now this is all about Andrew's financial conduct, using his royal status for private financial dealings, particularly linked
to the very controversial businessman David Rowland. Now the email warned that Andrew had secret financial links to this controversial millionaire who was abusing his royal links, and claimed that Andrew's sanctions suggest he considers his relationship with David Rowland more important, even than that of his family. That is the claim in the emails Also, the whistleblower urged that the matter was taken seriously in order to protect the
reputation of the royal family. So now the questions are really, if King Charles was warned about Andrew's conduct all the way back in twenty nineteen, how seriously did he take it? Then did he act upon it? Was enough done to protect the institution? Did the Royal household handle Andrew's controversies quickly and firmly enough? So it'll be very interesting to see how the Royal family deal with this. Will they remain silent, will they put out a statement? Will more
be done? There's lots of talk about removing Andrew from the line of succession.
The government can do that.
We'll see what happens.
Yeah, Look, it's going to be interesting.
But I mean, I don't know how much that the Royal family can shy away from this. I know that they're notoriously quiet, but in this case there's a lot coming to hand and I think that they're going to have to say something eventually. And then there's this other revelation from the former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He's claimed that Andrew I have even used taxpayer funded jets to mate with Jeffrey Epstein.
Emily, Yes, So the question now, Prince Andrew, these are revelations in the papers again Prince Andrew using taxpayer funded RIF jets military bases too to travel to see Jeffrey Epstein. Now, the former Prime minister, Gordon Brown was Prime Minister for a large section of that time three years. He's written to police urging them to investigate this new information. The key question were public resources used for these private meetings
with the convicted pedophil Jeffrey Epstein. Now there's no findings of wrongdoing at this stage, but if public money is involved Anika, it could raise serious questions, well more serious questions about the misuse of office.
But it is.
Interesting though, I will say this, It is interesting that Gordon Brown is saying these things now when he was Prime Minister for nearly three years during that time. And let's remember also that Gordon Brown is the man responsible for bringing Lord Mandelson, who is also currently under police investigation, although has not been charged or arrested, bringing him back into government, giving him a life peerage, allowing him to sit in the House of Laws and also return to Cabinet.
So it appears as though there's a lot of people suddenly remembering things, and I wonder whether this is to keep the heat of the current labor government.
Yeah, suddenly the memory has come back after all these years. It's extraordinary, isn't it. Sarah Ferguson looks she's also in broil in this. She exiled herself to the UAE once all the revelations come to light, including emails at her and Jeffrey Epstein had sent to each other. But it's now been revealed she's spent time at a recovery clinic in Switzerland.
Emily, Yes, so, as you say, she's being very much scrutinized to for her past connections to Epstein.
We found out.
That, yes, for a long period she was trying to keep a very low profile in Switzerland. Reports that she's been spending time at the Paracelsus recovery clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, which apparently cost thirteen thousand pounds a day. Now there are questions, aren't there over how she managed to afford this,
considering her well documented financial woes. But she has previously promoted the clinic I'd a bit on her social media platforms, so it may well have been a freebie or indeed paid for by one of her well connected friends.
Friends.
Some friends of hers are also talking to the papers. Apparently there's a lot of sources out there saying that she's very depressed, she thinks the whole world is out to get her, that she's very very down, that lots of people, including herself, are worried for her mental health. But that also she doesn't appear to show any remorse. So I'm not sure exactly where this is going to go with Sarah Ferguson, but I think it's probably a good thing that she's keeping a low profile.
Yeah, Alva, you'd want to exile yourself to the UAA.
Put it that way, You would not want to be anywhere that near the UK right now with all these revelations. That's for sure fascinating, isn't it. Emily Carver, thank you so much for your time, really appreciate it. Yeah, And as I said, it just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn't it?
Stay with me? Coming up, Danika's done of the Week. Welcome back.
It is now time for Danika has done of the week, and this week I'm giving it to the lovely Ladies of the View in America, specifically Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, because both of them are in absolute panic, having a meltdown of sorts after they were both listed in the Epstein files.
Have a look and they find enough for evidence, and really good evidence, because that list has a lot of crazy names on it, and it's almost like a way to muddy the waters so that you say, oh, well, you know Whoopy's on the list, right, and so am I I think why? Because wait, let me finish this, blaz We're on the list because we were at a party or a wedding or something that somebody might have been.
That's what I found out anyway, just a party, just a wedding. You know, it doesn't matter.
Not that I'm suggesting any wrongdoing by either of those women, but what it points to is these women they have been calling for Donald Trump's head over the Epstein.
Files for the past few years. And what does Donald Trump do.
He releases the Epstein files, and the Ladies of the View, Well, they got nothing else to talk about, do they? They're beside themselves because Donald Trump did what the Democrats did not, So what on earth a whoopee.
Enjoy going to talk.
About now, good grief, all the very best of them. Thank you very much for your company this evening. I'll be back again at eight pm on Friday for Opinionated. Coming up now is the McPherson Angle with James McPherson.
Good night,